


you want some more (sky is nothing to believe)

by skyisnothingtobelieve



Category: N.Flying (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angsty crack, Crack, Depression, Fluff, I don't know what to call this b/c this started out as crack, Nonlinear Narrative, Sexual Jokes, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Ideation, Swearing, but actually cracky angst, but no actual sexual content, but now it isn't, dark themes, depressed!Seunghyub, there is no cohesive story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-01-01 00:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18325430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyisnothingtobelieve/pseuds/skyisnothingtobelieve
Summary: Seunghyub is sick of the sun.





	1. it's the light within my reach (not as distant as it seemed)

“Good morning.”

Even if it were actually morning (it’s not, the crimson digits on the bedside clock read 3:22 and Seunghyub wants to die for the eighty-third time this week, not that he counted or anything) mornings are never good so Seunghyub gives the finger to no one in particular, hides under his blankets and tries to cry himself back to sleep.

“Hey, Lee Seunghyub. Wake up, J.Don. This is important.” Jaehyun tries to stab Seunghyub in the ass with something but misses and ends up getting him in the thigh instead.

Seunghyub wants to say it’s three in the morning leave me alone and why’d you drop the honorifics you ugly little shit but it’s three in the morning so it kind of comes out as “Mmhm?”

“So.” Jaehyun switches the light on (Seunghyub hisses as it flickers into visibility), crosses over to the other side of the room (it takes three steps). Squats in front of the outlet, sticks something (there’s a red smear that’s probably blood from Seunghyub’s leg) into the socket. “I’ve been putting the fork in the socket, why am I not dead?”

Eighty-four, not that he’s counting.

“That's a ceramic fork.”

Jaehyun squints, eyes smearing into ugly little crescents. Seunghyub’s thigh itches.

“Huh. I knew that.”

“Right.”

 

Sometimes on an off day when Jaehyun’s feeling exceptionally lonely (or at least that's how Seunghyub likes to interpret it) he flirts with everything that moves.

Except Seunghyub. Although Seunghyub’s pretty sure that's probably his own fault. He doesn't really move all that much. Staying still is a favorite pastime of his, and judging from the way people seem to part around him like the Red Sea in public spaces the sentiment isn’t popular. The world proceeds in afterimages, as if someone had pressed the fast forward button on everything except Seunghyub, who’s stuck in the motions where his joints can’t reach, colored glass viscosity coursing through bleach-boned languor. It's not that he doesn’t care about anything, he just doesn’t have the capacity to express himself beyond his customarily lethargic segments of aborted motion. There’s an invisible vertigo of language and human interaction that he can’t quite escape, and Seunghyub isn’t one to fight the current or get swept along between tides; he sinks, heavy, stagnant, still.

Jaehyun has a celery heart and moves like sand through an hourglass, rocketship feelings and rosary walkways. He's made of Scherenschnitte patterns and pastiche crayon contour that can’t quite cast itself into a definite shape, pours over his shoulders in splintered cloves. He holds himself together like a coloring book, loose leaf pages that get jigsaw edges from having been torn out of their spiral binding.

They are ships passing in the night, people that should never connect, brushing sleeves at an intersection. Seunghyub shouldn’t be able to keep up with people like him, people who don’t hold their breaths when sunlight scrapes against their skin, people whose lungs haven’t twisted into the wrong shape from having drowned in the city air.

It’s two worlds that shouldn’t touch, two sets of eyes that shouldn’t meet but they do because Jaehyun is stubborn when he holds fast onto something and doesn’t let go, because Jaehyun is the gift that never stops giving, thinks he’s the biggest shit on the lawn even though he’s no different from the suspicious stain Mongeul might’ve left on Hongki’s wool rug last week.

But maybe being a shitstain is all Seunghyub really needs from him. It’s nice to think that too fast is good, that too fast is a pacemaker. It’s nice to think that too fast gives him metronome skyways and mechanical wings, too fast will thrust him back into the orbit of the world. It’s nice to think that too fast seeks gravity, runs into things and here’s to Seunghyub hoping he’ll be run into, dashed against the earth. Broken apart, faster than rainfall.

He thinks he likes that, the sound of water shattering into little points of nothing.

 

Jaehyun and Hun have known each other pretty much since birth. Their mothers were friends from the same workspace. When Hun first learned how to walk, Jaehyun was there to push him down the stairs. When Jaehyun strung together his first sentence, two-year-old Hun screamed for ten minutes straight, as if compensating for every conversation he would have with Jaehyun in the future.

Seunghyub makes the mistake of asking Hun (one night over a box of fried chicken) if you’ve known him for so long why didn’t you choose to room together to which Hun had responded by turning to look Jaehyun in the eye, “Remember in second grade when we were playing with legos and I’d used the starship engine piece and you wanted to use the starship engine piece but didn’t feel like asking so when I went to the restroom you took it when nobody was looking and afterward I asked for it back and you said no and bit me in the arm so hard the marks wouldn’t go away for a week?”

“No,” Jaehyun takes a bite out of Hun’s drumstick. “Remember when grew your hair long and told everyone it was because you wanted to look like Hayley Williams from Paramore?”

 

Linear algebra midterms, with the eighty-something-year-old professor who looks ready to kick the bucket anyday. Jaehyun copies off Seunghyub who copies off Hweseung who’s a moron so they all end up with Cs. But it’s okay ‘cause Seunghyub doesn’t really give a shit. He’s only even taking the course at all because math is loosely related to music theory. Or at least that’s just what he tells people, truth is he needs some outside-of-major filler units and he can’t be fucked to pick up a humanities course.

Jaehyun cares maybe a little but he can’t complain, he’s been sleeping during lecture for three weeks straight. Hweseung on the other hand has a lifelong relationship with his parents riding on whether he can maintain his 4.81 GPA, and he’s got this weekend research project at KAIST that also depends on his transcript so there’s no margin for fucking up in the future. This means quiet hours for the next two weeks, and absolutely no loud sounds at all costs.

That kind of rule’s fine with Seunghyub. Great, even. If Seunghyub had the energy to expend on reinforcing such a rule, he’d probably have introduced it himself in the first place.

What Seunghyub couldn’t anticipate was Jaehyun actually abiding by Hweseung’s rules. No getting woken up at three in the morning, no trot songs blaring through the walls. No getting stabbed with a fork either, or having recording sessions interrupted by eSports commentary. No grating static from someone flipping through the home shopping channel, or random screeching, or rapid, angry clicking, or friends invited over with loud, crunchy snacks and Hongki’s weird bubbly laughter.

Hun isn’t home often, Hweseung shut himself in his room with his textbooks and lecture notes, and now Jaehyun, the source of a good ninety-five percent of their apartment’s noise, moves around like a ghost, respectful of Hweseung’s math grade, and Seunghyub isn’t sure what to make of this.

Uninvited, Jaehyun has found his way into all the in-between spaces, like a spider making its little web in the forlorn corner of a childhood pillow fortress, and Seunghyub isn’t sure what to make of this stillness, once comfortable, now unnerving, spilling into the hull of his throat. Stillness that quarantines his bedroom with its never-ending anesthesia, stillness that cools the coffee mug, stillness that makes all silent films with happy endings a little sad.

 

First impressions mean a lot and Jaehyun met Seunghyub for the first time in the traffic jam line at one of the campus cafés. It didn’t take long for Jaehyun to realize that the guy behind him was kind of maybe really creepy. So he said so, in the nicest passive-aggressive way he knew how.

“You’re staring.”

The guy seemed startled and Jaehyun wondered if maybe it wasn’t meant to be a creepy stare after all, he’d just been really deep in thought and Jaehyun’s face coincidentally happened to be the patch of space his unfocused vision rested on. Scratched at his neck lazily and mumbled in a voice dead as leaves and deeper than anything Jaehyun’s heard come from a human mouth in a while, “Yeah.”

Well, what the fuck, Jaehyun had already prepared a retort for every other possible response. “People generally consider that creepy.”

“I know.”

“It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Cool.”

“I’d really like it if you’d stop staring.”

The guy gave a tweenager glare that meant I don’t give a shit what you’d really like but averted his gaze anyway, pretending to read off the overhead menu. Jaehyun thinks he catches him side-eyeing him briefly while he’s picking up his order, but it might’ve been a trick of the light.

They met for the second time at the library through a mutual friend. Hun was the world’s mutual friend, though, despite how he behaved, which meant there was also Hongki and this guy called Hweseung whom everyone claimed could top a season of King of Masked Singer but gave Jaehyun the impression of someone who should be on Hello Counselor for his eating habits instead. Seunghyub was less than an afterthought, and the only reason why Jaehyun even noticed him at all was because of the way the guy kept shooting him disapproving scowls for reasons Jaehyun wasn’t quite aware.

Later Hun explains to him that that’s just the face Seunghyub makes when he’s sleepy. Jaehyun isn’t really convinced, though, the guy definitely seemed to have something against him. Like it’s a pretty exclusive scowl of disapproval tailor-made for Jaehyun and Jaehyun only, although Jaehyun’s also sure that the guy had a sort of me-against-the-world agenda and probably hated everything (exception: Hweseung) and not just Jaehyun. He almost doesn’t want to give himself the benefit of the doubt. The devil works hard but Jaehyun’s ego works harder, and he hates feeling special only to find out later that the only person entertaining his expectations had been himself.

They met for the third time after Hun dragged the poor guy from whatever hellhole he crawled out of for coffee and baked sweets and Seunghyub’s wide awake this time, for what it’s worth, and the scowl is less disapproving and he’s obviously trying his best to be nice. The first thing that comes to Jaehyun’s mind is “do you always look like you’re stoned” but Jaehyun is polite from time to time so he doesn’t say it out loud.

“What do you want for dinner?” Hun asks instead and of course Hun would want all of his friends to be friends with each other.

Seunghyub grunts or farts or something and with his natural resting face and the way his eyebrows scrunch up Jaehyun thinks it kind of looks like he’s saying “your mom” even though it’s probably supposed to mean “pizza”.

Somehow Hongki understands this and invites them all over to his place for sweet potato pizza and half-and-half chicken. Yonsei’s campus is all neo-Victorian brick and manicured gardens unlike the concrete slabs and monolithic glass structures of Hongik, and Jaehyun feels like he’s in a foreign country.

But something catches in his vision and it’s Seunghyub with his ugly glasses and perpetually constipated expression. There’s something, Jaehyun’s not sure exactly what, maybe the way Seunghyub’s fingers unconsciously try to change the volume on his music, maybe the way he’s trying so hard to show how much of a fuck he does not give when he’s giving so much there’s nothing left for himself, something that’s evasive to the eye and inexplicably captivating, the first raindrop before a sudden shower. Maybe it’s the way he looks at the ground when he’s walking, counting all his steps like they’re the longest way home.

All of a sudden it isn’t so hard anymore for Jaehyun to pretend he’s right where he belongs.

 

“Rapper J.DON,” Jaehyun reads off Seunghyub’s SNS profile. There’s tomato sauce smudged on Jaehyun’s chin and it’s probably the alcohol but Seunghyub has this weird urge to wipe it off. “You can use ‘J-Swiggity on the track’ for your intro, just remember to credit me.”

“He’s a songwriter and producer, too,” Hweseung answers before Seunghyub can so much as process what’s been said. “J.Don’s his stage name.”

“Spicy,” Jaehyun bites into a breadstick, “You a hipster or a gangster?”

“Neither,” Hongki wrinkles his nose, “he’s just a sad nerd.” Hun snickers. Seunghyub resists the urge to shove his chopsticks up someone’s oral cavity. Succeeds. Always succeeds, isn’t very hard when most of the time he doesn’t want to do anything enough to actually do them except maybe breathe, although he isn’t sure whether he wants to do that either.

Hweseung, ever the sweetheart, frowns. “He’s practically a celebrity. Lee Seunghyub, music department genius, I bet they actually have a plaque of that somewhere. Slated to be contracted with FNC Entertainment’s production team as soon as he graduates, did a collaboration with Shin Jimin and everything.” Fuck him sideways, kid’s got a whole eulogy memorized. “He even had an interview with Newsen about his upcoming song Rooftop. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him, hyung.” Hweseung reaches for his backpack to dig out his phone. “Wanna listen?”

Pocari Sweat mixer fizzes up Seunghyub’s nose and all of a sudden he’s protesting but it’s too late, Yoo motherfucking Hweseung has already hit the play button on J dot DON’s latest R&B track. Seunghyub’s grateful for Hweseung’s enthusiasm as it signifies how much he cares, but too often it’s about the wrong thing.

Jaehyun is respectfully silent (even though Hongki is disrespectfully not) until the song ends and Seunghyub expects him to say “it’s pretty good” or “it’s cool, I like it” or “J-Swiggity on the track” or any other customary remark given common courtesy. Instead he asks Hweseung to play it again, and it isn’t until after it’s over that he looks up from his shot glass, “Has anyone ever told you that,” he cocks his head toward Seunghyub like he’s saying something serious, like it’s the most important thing he’s ever said, “has anyone ever told you that it sounds really sad? Even though the lyrics are about finding love. I mean, I don’t really understand music or anything, but it sounds like the saddest thing in the world.”

Seunghyub’s abruptly jolted into an ugly, aching sobriety that makes him feel as if he were drifting in an aquarium tank, or some kind of glass container filled with water and creatures better off inhaling the sea than the sky, and he wants to say no, nobody’s ever told me that, nobody even talks like that you fucking weirdo. You don’t say things like that and especially not to people you’ve just met, although I think you called me a creep once even before that, do you even know how to mind your own damn business? Seunghyub wants to say it’s a love song, do you have any respect for songwriters at all that you’d say that to my face, or do you think you’re really insightful and special or something and you’re the only one who can tell, the only person who’s ever hit the ugly truth. Seunghyub wants to say yes, someone has told me that, everyone tells me that and you’re the last one to the party, fucker. Seunghyub wants to say even if it’s the alcohol talking you shouldn’t have said it, there are things that should remain unseen and invisible messes that are meant to be left in their hiding places, so just leave me alone. Seunghyub wants to say once I was listening to my own heartbeat and I wished for it to stop, then took it back and wished to live forever. I’ve made the same wish a thousand times since. That was actually my inspiration for this song, but he doesn't say anything at all.

Seunghyub just covers his mouth with the back of his hand and slowly, softly, begins to laugh.

 

Seunghyub is sick of the sun, the pastel crayon sun, the grapefruit tumor satellite image egg yolk sun. He imagines a massive plastic fork that descends from the sky to pop the embryo, mashing it into nothing with surgical savagery.

Days like these the sun shouts into the split ends of his hair, illuminates the sidewalk increments between his sneakers on his way to class. He tugs at the drawstring of his hoodie, runs his fingers down the wire of his headphones. The morning is a snake that’s eaten its own tail, hissing with discomfort when the afternoon discord meant for fighting with Hweseung over the volume cuts, crystal-jagged, against Seunghyub’s palm. Forms creases, little slots of time on hands that can’t seem to make anything.

Seunghyub spends all evening organizing the collection of vinyls he’s gotten as small gifts from DJ gigs by the color of their covers, then taking it apart and rearranging them in the order they would sound best if they were all one massive album. He misses a dinner banquet held by his major’s association to lie in bed, sit out the day’s unease, wait for something—he doesn’t really know what—to pass.

It doesn’t. That’s okay. If anything, Seunghyub is patient.


	2. like the days gone too far for us to seize

Seunghyub is sick of the way everything’s arranged in timetable veracity, laid out in a matrix of calculator buttons and eight-measure steps. His thoughts come in clockwork parts that disassemble when they’re found by the sun. He locks the pieces in a half-basement and sets the key to another time zone.

First snow falls early this year and it’s at the crack of dawn, minutes before Seunghyub gets ready for bed. He only really notices at all because his desk lamp by the window flickers just conspicuously enough to make him glance up from the faint glow of his monitor. It writes lyrics into his head, pretty words that rhyme with quiet things and he falls asleep with a head filled with snow. When he wakes up he can’t remember the lyrics and he feels he’s forgotten something important.

Perhaps he’s forgotten a lot of these important things, only he doesn’t remember that they’re gone at all.

 

Contrary to Jaehyun’s expectations, Seunghyub is a sleepy drunk. Jaehyun had been hoping for some wild reversal, top ten anime plot twists, Seunghyub’s an angry, violent alcoholic after all—but no, guy just sort of goes quiet, eyelids fluttering, cheeks flushed, unmoving. If anything he looks less sullen, which isn’t a soaring accomplishment since his natural expression seems to be grumpy no matter how un-grumpy Seunghyub actually is.

Across the street from Hongik’s main gate there’s this playground that’s all graffiti paint and cartoon character dreams and Seunghyub has spent one too many evenings at the top of the slide people-watching. Once, Jaehyun catches him there staring at a couple and tells him he’s a creep.

Seunghyub scratches his head. “It’s an occupational disease,” Seunghyub mutters, face unnaturally pink and Jaehyun thinks he’s spent too much time in the sun until Seunghyub attempts to stand and ends up rolling down the slide sideways.

Jaehyun hails a taxi and dumps Seunghyub’s body in the passenger seat, a tangle of too-long limbs and an unbuttoned collar smelling of soju and MSG.

“Fucking hell,” Jaehyun scrunches his nose, “it’s two in the afternoon.”

Seunghyub gives a shy smile and that’s how Jaehyun knows he’s completely wasted, because Seunghyub would never smile so genuinely like that—or at all—at _Jaehyun_ , sober. Jaehyun gives the driver an address and advance fee and makes to close the door, but Seunghyub leans over and holds it open.

“Stay. I mean. Come with?” Seunghyub pats the seat next to his, the uncomfortable one in the middle that doesn’t have a seatbelt. Jaehyun isn’t sure if he’s lucky Seunghyub won’t remember anything by the time he wakes up. It’ll be easier to annoy him with, but the idea of teasing Seunghyub about this feels a little wrong, and somehow Jaehyun’s almost sure he’ll embarrass himself just as much as he’d embarrass Seunghyub.

Jaehyun squints at the telephone pole wires overhead. “I have class at three.”

“That’s the one you always skip.” And Seunghyub’s arm is around Jaehyun’s, firmer than it looks, tugging him inside. “Just until we get home? Then you can go to class.”

Seunghyub smiles again, this time a low, indignant whine escaping through his teeth and it settles somewhere in Jaehyun’s stomach, a pit of guilt. As much of an obnoxious brat Seunghyub can be at times, he’s never one to inconvenience others. Seunghyub who complains all the time, Seunghyub who’s considerate and looks out for everyone, often at the expense of himself. Jaehyun doesn’t really understand this inconsistency of character, and it’s only when Seunghyub takes him by surprise in this single selfish moment that Jaehyun realizes how much thought Seunghyub has put into accommodating others.

Kind Seunghyub, Seunghyub who gives and never asks for anything in return and if he does—never means it. Seunghyub who laughs—or probably forces himself to—at all the jokes Jaehyun tells; Jaehyun has seen the corners of his mouth tighten and fall away as quickly as they’d been pulled up as if an invisible force had let them go and he knows, he knows Seunghyub laughs for Hweseung’s sake, for Hun’s sake, for Jaehyun’s.

Seunghyub whom Jaehyun’s seen lying on the floor of an unlit room reading online criticism of his songs, carving every slender epithet, every bitter insult into the hull of his throat. Seunghyub who relies on the flickering light of his busted desk lamp for company, Seunghyub who thinks he’s nothing without his music.

“Yeah,” Jaehyun smiles back, hard enough that all the wrinkles on his face show, “yeah, I’ll come.”

And Seunghyub, he laughs that miserable laugh, the one for anyone’s sake but his own.

 

Seunghyub is sick of being a kite without a string, that kind of birthday balloon emptiness that fills and pops and fills again. He counts his days on a sheet of bubble wrap, dodges airplanes in the sky but the sun is a suicide bomber that sends him back to earth.

Christmas comes earlier than usual thanks to Hweseung’s insistence that it’s made of twelve days. Seunghyub wakes up one morning to find Hweseung’s holiday cheer borne out in the interior design of their living room. It’s mostly made of candy cane, gingerbread and edibles, and Seunghyub wonders who Hweseung’s trying to fool. Walks past where Hongki had scribbled “cha hun’s dick is smaller than a usb stick” (and underneath, Jaehyun had neatly printed “and it fits up Seunghyub’s ass”) on a whiteboard placard and hung it on the miniature Christmas tree Jaehyun managed to bring from home. Seunghyub is almost tempted to add a comeback, but he can’t think of something witty enough so he just leaves it be.

The others aren’t awake yet and Seunghyub sets his poorly-wrapped gifts beneath the tiny tree: dynamic mic and several boxes of cookies for Hweseung, a PRS SE Custom for Hun. Jaehyun was the hard one—Hweseung and Hun have definite interests, but Jaehyun’s marginally interested in everything. Seunghyub had ended up settling on clothing and a gift card, despite initially fearing it might come off as a little too impersonal. He supposes Jaehyun will appreciate it anyway, the way Jaehyun appreciates everything, without exception.

Christmas breakfast is noodles and warm broth. Afterward Hweseung and Hun argue over what goes on top of the tree. Hun wants the star but Hweseung wants the chocolate angel. Seunghyub is tempted to say Jaehyun’s smile, it’s like a fucking Christmas light. Winter wonderland teeth, whatever. Fluorescent like bone, or snow beneath a streetlamp, a thousand, thousand tiny mirrors. Or fireworks that last forever, more brilliant than the sun.

Seunghyub sides with Hweseung and Jaehyun with Hun until Hweseung threatens to never cook for anyone again. Hun concedes and starts an argument with Jaehyun over a video about cats, and Seunghyub allows himself the quiet mundanity of the morning, the curve of Hun’s shoulder against his, Hweseung’s laugh that seems to never end.

And Jaehyun is a crooked light, steady as the winter moon.

 

“Are you sick?” Dinner is Hweseung’s signature spam fried rice, made with spam, rice, peas, butter, garlic and love.

According to Seunghyub’s house rules, Thursday dinners are meant to be spent together, to encourage roommate bonding or whatever. The fatal flaw in his plan is Seunghyub himself never manages to motivate any actual bonding, not because he doesn’t try, but because Seunghyub’s always been good at ending conversations and the worst at starting them. Jaehyun suspects it’s all just Seunghyub’s excuse to bask in Hweseung’s presence anyway.

“Allergies,” Hun wipes his nose on Jaehyun’s sleeve. “I hate spring.”

“You hate everything,” Jaehyun flicks his spoon at Hun, flecks of rice landing on his shirt.

Seunghyub has been fiddling with a circuit board since before Hweseung began preparing dinner, courtesy of the mechanical engineering minor he’d picked up halfway through the semester. It’s going to delay his graduation, Seunghyub assures them, but it’s apparently “essential” to his education as someone interested in the sound tech trade. Jaehyun watches him jump in his seat, having brushed a skinny finger against an uninsulated segment of wire with the power turned on. Jaehyun casts his stare into his bowl, barely avoiding Seunghyub’s gaze when he glances up to make sure nobody saw him.

“But spring is when the flowers bloom,” Seunghyub intones quietly, and for all the man’s complexity, Jaehyun has to marvel at how predictable Seunghyub is sometimes. He likes pretty things, like stars and dead leaves and rainfall, pretty things that fall from the sky. “Hweseung, you’ll come with me to see the cherry blossoms, right?”

Seunghyub’s in a good mood, playing with his hands and moving his fingers in patterns Jaehyun can’t quite figure out. He wouldn’t be talking so much in the first place if he weren’t, although it’s hard to tell sometimes, because Seunghyub has always been a good listener.

“He has midterms next week,” Hun scrapes some of his rice onto Hweseung’s plate, “and he hasn’t been doing so well this semester.”

Hweseung’s mother comes over every Tuesday to refill the refrigerator with around fifty servings of stir-fried anchovies, musaengchae, gaji-namul and banana milk. Jaehyun’s glad to know where Hweseung gets his good-at-cooking genes and occasionally (frequently) help himself to the food, but sometimes these visits result in not-so-subtle interrogations about how Hweseung’s doing at school, and it’s almost always Seunghyub who ends up with the responsibility of reporting Hweseung’s studying and social habits since neither Jaehyun nor Hun is diplomatic enough to balance social grace and brutal honesty.

Seunghyub sets down the circuit board (finally), loops an arm around Hun’s shoulder. “You come with me, then. It’ll be a date,” and Jaehyun fights the urge to look away, irritation bubbling in his chest. “Me and you. Day one, starting today,” Seunghyub’s lips fix into a lopsided smile, a rare one, and he makes a finger heart at an invisible camera.

“Gross, no,” Hun makes a face, pushing Seunghyub away.

Hweseung pokes at a pea with his fork. “Hun hyung doesn’t have time, either, he’s always at work.”

Seunghyub’s arm retreats, too fast to be a natural movement. The rest of dinner consists of Hun and Jaehyun bickering and trying to peer pressure Hweseung into taking a side. Seunghyub finishes his food silently and retires to his room with his circuit board, quieter than a ghost, as if he were never there.

And Jaehyun wonders if he’d said anything wrong, or if it’s just him that’s wrong, for Kim Jaehyun to never have been an option to begin with.

 

“Hey, J.Don.”

“I don’t respond to that name,” Seunghyub responds.

“J.Don J.Don J.Don J.Don J.Don.”

“What?”

“You’re ugly.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I borrow your bio notes?”

“No.”

“Too late, I already have them. And Hweseung says he can’t reach the Sriracha sauce. He also says to stop putting it on the highest shelf—”

“That was on purpose.”

“What?”

“Hweseung looks cute when he’s trying to reach the top shelf.”

“...Oh.”

“Mm.”

 

Seunghyub is the textbook guy-who-eats-alone.

It creeps Jaehyun out a little bit. Eating alone is kind of sad, sure, but it’s bound to happen from time to time, even to someone like Jaehyun who can’t stand the very thought of having to eat alone. Jaehyun gets the occasional takeout from Kimbap Heaven too; what makes Seunghyub hardcore is he’s done the full course, beat all the quests on Main Story Mode and has moved onto the hidden missions.

Like eating out of a special edition Valentine’s Day lunchbox in the middle of Mangridangil because he ended up having to go see the cherry blossoms by himself, or spending two hours in an eight-person booth at a family buffet. Treats himself to bimonthly grilled pork skin at the little barbecue place by Hapjeong and never misses a day because it’s not worth screwing up his punch card rate of 4 points per 2 weeks. It’s the type of high-level eating alone that Jaehyun is sure takes a real fucking loser to endorse.

And that’s what Jaehyun tells Seunghyub to his face, once, in the school cafeteria: “You’ll look like a fucking loser if you keep eating alone like that. It’s pitiful.”

Seunghyub’s mouth is full of rice so he pats the seat next to his.

“Then we’ll both look like fucking losers,” Jaehyun says, but sits down anyway.

Jaehyun has an egg sandwich and an entire tonkatsu cutlet off Seunghyub’s plate. He’s happier than he’d like to admit, eating with Seunghyub, but it really could’ve been anybody—Jaehyun is sure he would’ve been happy regardless of who invited him to eat with them as long as there was someone who did. 

But at the moment, Seunghyub is the one who’s with him, and Jaehyun thinks he wouldn’t be unhappy if Seunghyub continues to be the one beside him, in all the days to come.

 

Seunghyub is sick of waking up in the morning. Daylight enters the world with toothpaste fanfare, drowns him in the agony of consciousness. The sun is a fluorine shell, overlaid with a floss of clouds that taste of mint and fermenting unease.

His half-awake days are filled with negotiating something from nothing and similarly unkind notions of aloneness. Someone tells him that there’s something there in the days to come but he’s sure it’s the same six o’clock reflection of waxing philosophical in the bathroom mirror, the unlit hallway, the froth of soap on his lips disappearing beneath the trickle of sinkwater. His movements are carbon copies of someone else’s and he wonders what it’d feel like to not move at all—so he tries it. He skips class and spends a day in bed, tracing the wrinkles in his blanket with a limp finger. Steps out onto the balcony, even though it’s too cold to be outside. Looks outward pretending there’s something ahead, then down. Thinking about how long it takes for a body to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any feedback is much appreciated! even if you're here to scold me over taking too long to upload;;
> 
> feel free to follow me on Twitter! handle is @ttungttunghano1 and display name is uriquack! am smol N.Flying stan account beware of IU & gg spam


	3. like fallen leaves (in a water-filled dream)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the slow update, school is a thing

Seunghyub is sick of the way everything comes in colors. The walls bleed white, asbestos discharge of thinning viscera that peels like dead skin. An acid-orange sun flattens itself against a horizon of violet wrinkles. Jaehyun’s lips are scarlet with the silence of a midwinter evening.

His phone lights up beside him and he notices the time printed on the screen, 4:02 AM in broad, white strokes, suspended over a badly-taken background picture that Jaehyun had set and promised Seunghyub an entire month’s worth of Pocari Sweat if he kept it.

It’s of them—all of them—Jaehyun, Hun and Hweseung, faces blurry behind the smog of barbecue fire at a restaurant near the Yongsan Garrison. Only part of Seunghyub’s left ear is visible, chopped cleanly by the edge of his phone. When Seunghyub takes pictures there’s always something important that gets cut off, out-of-frame, maybe a hand, maybe a gesture, maybe an entire face or person. Maybe it cannot be seen, maybe it’s something that should be there but always seems to be missing.

The lighting is especially bad in this one and Jaehyun’s face is split by the shadow of Hweseung’s raised chopsticks, dimly illuminated by some overhead pendant light. If Seunghyub covers the right side of Jaehyun’s face with a finger it looks like he’s laughing, but if he covers the left it looks like he’s crying. Seunghyub is vaguely reminded of a theater mask. There’s a brownish smudge in the upper right corner of the picture that Seunghyub suspects is his own thumb, but other than that and the ear, the picture looks as if Seunghyub was never there.

Pictures are reality’s disagreeable children—on screen Hweseung’s eyelashes are shorter and stray shadows do his features no favor; there’s this pretty quality to Hweseung’s smile that cameras can’t quite capture. Hun seems too sharp where the edges are supposed to be rounded, the crook of his teeth too jagged, the arch of his brow too disapproving, the glint in his eyes too critical. Jaehyun is the same, though, in every way—the crow’s feet dusting the corners of his eyes, the steady tilt of his chin, the eternal expression between laughter and tears, Jaehyun is the same. Seasons change and so do people, but Seunghyub can’t help wondering if Jaehyun ever does.

For the first time in several weeks, Seunghyub falls asleep before the sun rises. He dreams of water, rising, falling, overlapping, swallowing the moon and then becoming still.

 

“You know that fourth year dude we were with two days ago? At your place? The one with the ugly sweater?”

“You mean Seunghyub?”

“Yeah, that guy. Give me his number.”

“Rude. I’m your hyung,” Hongki frowns. “What’s the magic word?”

“Give me his number now.”

Hongki reads it off his contact list. “Why?”

“No reason.” Lee Seunghyub sunbaenim. After a moment of thought Jaehyun deletes the honorific.

“Do you have a crush on him or something? Fuck, I have to protect him from annoying dickheads like you. He looks like a mean bastard but he’s really precious.”

Jaehyun snorts. “You just gave me his number, hyung.”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“I literally just met him,” Jaehyun picks at a loose thread on his shirt. “I’m looking for a new roommate and I haven’t met many people Hun’s actually comfortable with.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?”

“Hyung,” Jaehyun sighs, “I’m serious. I don’t like him. I mean, I like him I guess, but not in that way.” And it’s the truth. Jaehyun is more self-aware than most people give him credit for and getting smashed with someone at a kickback is hardly a recipe for love at first sight, if Jaehyun could call it love at all. There was no feeling of restlessness, no invisible magic, the secret glances and fairy tale whispers. Seunghyub’s breathing had been steady and depthless, and he’d stared mostly at Hweseung with mismatched eyes that’d begged to get through the night unnoticed, like a fish out on the sand trying to hide from the gulls circling above. Drying from the sun, begging for oxygen. He’d barely talked at all, much less with Jaehyun.

Hongki rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, man.”

“Mm, he’s not my type anyway.” Jaehyun remembers long fingers, quiet laughter, a smattering of dark hair. “But I think we’ll get along well.”

 

Inside Hun’s heart there’s a pool. It’s deep beyond imagination, with trenches of infinite proportion. This is where Hun keeps his patience.

The pool explains lots of things. Firstly, he’s a literature major. He specializes in Hwang Byungseung’s new-wave aestheticism. Contrary to his peers and professors, who claim his work is nonsense, Hun finds it beautiful (and painful, which Hun likes to correlate with beauty). He posts analyses of Hwang Byungseung’s writing on his classical rock and literature blog with two hundred sixty-four followers. He writes about poetry and calls Yeojangnamjang Sikoku “vain, vulgar sagacity that picks apart human interaction with a raw genius.”

Jaehyun calls it fucking pretentious.

Which is unfortunate but fair enough. Not all people understand fine literature, and everyone has differing opinions anyway (even if their opinions are wrong, like Jaehyun’s). There’s no need to expect everyone to enjoy what you enjoy. Hun draws from his pool and moves on.

Secondly, he works three part-time jobs. Monday and Wednesday nights he has the midnight shift at a twenty-four hour convenience store. At 11:30 PM he restocks all the shelves and waits for the stumbling drunkards and engineering students to begin their nightly rituals. The guy covering the next shift clocks in around dawn, and Hun returns home to squeeze in an hour’s nap before he wakes up again to prepare for his 8 AM class. He spends Tuesday and Saturday afternoons and all of Sunday as a receptionist for a foreign travel agency. There he exercises his ability to speak multiple languages (talking to moron tourists who shouldn’t be given vacations). It’s a great opportunity to improve his English and the pay is considerable, so he takes it for what it’s worth. Another portion of his Wednesday is spent waiting on white collar customers at a jjigae restaurant. He smells like bean paste (shit) for the rest of the week, but the owner is kind and employees are served free meals. Hun draws from his pool and moves on.

And then there are his flatmates. Jaehyun is a little better. At least he (somewhat) regularly attends classes and puts in the necessary minimal effort to keep up with schoolwork. He respects Hun’s privacy and doesn’t take or use his things (most of the time) or mistake them for his own (like Seunghyub). He washes his own dishes, cleans up after himself (usually), even cleans up after others. Sometimes he’s a little loud (and sometimes he’s a little bitch) but he isn’t that bad, really. Hun draws from his pool and moves on.

Seunghyub, on the other hand, kind of implodes. Every time Seunghyub makes an expression that isn’t resting bitch face, absolute moron or heart eyes for Hweseung, it is somewhere between sad puppy and cripplingly depressed, usually settling at around I’m smiling but I’m not okay, and this (occasionally) fills Hun’s pool with misery, hopelessness and despair (although most of the time Hun cannot be fucked to bring himself to care). Some days just looking at Seunghyub’s room is enough to make Hun feel like crying (which is a lie, because Hun cannot remember having ever cried except once when he was dicing onions). The little shrine of empty Pocari Sweat bottles decorating the floor of a bedroom that otherwise looks like the interior of a hospital is the saddest thing Hun’s ever seen. Once Hun came home at six in the morning to Seunghyub talking to the bee that died because it was caught in the window blinds eight months ago. Hun isn’t sure whether Seunghyub is developing horror movie serial killer habits or if he’s in need of warm soup and a nice, long hug (that Hun won’t give). He decides it’s not really worth thinking about; Hun draws from his pool and moves on.

Hweseung does this thing though. He does this thing with his weird cartoon villain laugh and all of a sudden the pool is empty. He does this thing where he goes about dusting the floor, even though three months ago Jaehyun had introduced N.P., their pet robot vacuum and latest addition to the family, and scrubbing away at the squeaky-clean surface of a dining room table that seems to have been wiped ten times too many. He does this thing where he leaves doenjang jjigae heated on the stove for Hun when he gets home from work during the odd morning hours.

Hun doesn’t have the heart to tell Hweseung he’s sick of doenjang jjigae, that he smells it every Wednesday and it makes him feel like throwing up.

Hweseung does this thing with his parents’ expectations, pulling three all-nighters in a row during exams week, rewriting his handwritten notes until he’s memorized it all word for word. Hweseung’s weekends are spent at KAIST with a psychology study under a distinguished professor, and had it not been for Seunghyub’s Thursday dinner house rule, Hun isn’t sure he’ll be able to see Hweseung around at all. Their schedules are mismatched, the difference between day and night.

Hun thinks maybe it’s how it’s meant to be.

Then Hweseung does this thing, and Hun finds his heart at the bottom of a stainless steel pot that reeks of doenjang even after he’s washed it.

 

Seunghyub dreams of drowning. It’s one of his most common nightmares, and one of his most vivid. There’s no pain and no struggle, but he distinctly remembers the sensation of water filling his lungs, that violently innocuous loss of air. The crush of force, invisible but not offensive, wrapping itself around his body, the liquid of nothing curling into his throat, swallowing him as he swallows it.

He wakes up crying, for some reason, his body bracing for contact against the first breaking tide.

 

Seunghyub goes home—his home in Daegu, since he has two now—on Chuseok. 

There’s a family gathering, with aunts and uncles and second cousins with names Seunghyub doesn’t remember or know in the first place. After a night of grilled pancakes and pats on the back from people whose breaths smelled of makgeolli (Seunghyub, I haven’t seen you since you were eight, Seunghyub, play something on the piano, Seunghyub is a college student now, Seunghyub wrote a song that charted first on Melon 100, I can introduce Seunghyub to a nice girl) Seunghyub settles in the kitchen with his laptop and a can of soda. His mother finds him there refreshing web pages, watching Rooftop rise and fall on the charts in real time, a miniature garden of ten-minute intervals.

His phone lights up when Hun sends a cat video in their roommates KKT chatroom, and his mother points at the figures on his lock screen, asks about each one.

“Yoo Hweseung.” Hweseung’s eyes are focused on the pork belly instead of the camera and Seunghyub fights a grin. “He does most of the housework. He has a pretty voice. He works hard and laughs a lot.”

“This is Hun. He plays video games and guitar. He’s good at guitar but bad at video games. He likes cats more than anything.”

“They sound like good kids,” his mother says, and then taps a finger over Jaehyun’s head. “What about him?”

With Hweseung and Hun the words were a natural reaction, leaving his tongue before he can even begin to brood over what to say. It’s strange that when it comes to Jaehyun, Seunghyub has to think about all the simple truths and odd details. That he knows too much about Kim Jaehyun, that it takes ten minutes of shouting to wake him, that he makes glow-in-the-dark fairy jars and sets them on the balcony, that he eats two Jjapaghettis for dinner if Hweseung’s not cooking, that he once showed up at a party dressed as the blue genie from Aladdin and was promptly kicked out. That his sister is a successful actress, that he works as an escape room host twice a month, that he hates sweets, that he has a C in literature but an A in all his other classes, that the only attraction he’s willing to approach at Lotte World is the kiddie playground—even the merry-go-round is usually too much to ask for. That despite knowing everything about him, it doesn’t feel like Seunghyub knows Kim Jaehyun at all.

It’s 12:21 and Seunghyub clicks refresh. Rooftop is 28th, having fallen four places. That’s not too bad for zombie hours.

He refreshes the page once more just in case it magically updates—it doesn’t. His mother notices but doesn’t say anything.

Seunghyub sips from the can of soda, letting the froth bubble into nothingness before he speaks. “I know him pretty well and I think he knows me too.”

 

Jaehyun is many things and Seunghyub can forgive them all but for his shit taste in music.

“What are you even listening to?” Spring Memories. What a generic fucking title. It’s a song sung by an idol band called N.Flying or something. Seunghyub is sure whoever had written it is a talentless sellout.

“I’m sorry I don’t share your passion for music nobody knows about.” Jaehyun scrunches up his eyes into a tired squint, makes his voice deep and whiny and Daegu-accent throaty in a mock imitation of Seunghyub’s, which, by the way, doesn’t sound like that. “I only listen to Neue Deutsche Welle, lo-fi hip hop and 1985 vinyls of The Talking Heads.”

Hweseung rests his chin on the nearest available pillow, which happens to be Seunghyub’s arm. “Seunghyub hyung knows all the popular songs too. He’s remixed Gogobebe and Dalla Dalla.” Seunghyub makes a mental note to buy Hweseung gukbap for defending his honor.

“You don’t get it.” Jaehyun frowns. “You haven’t seen his study playlist. I’m pretty sure there are only three people in the world who’ve heard of Bourbonese Qualk.”

Seunghyub sniffs indignantly, watches Jaehyun spill Jjapagetti sauce on his shirt. “That’s really bad for you, you know.”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes. “I’m here for a good time, not a long time,” and scoops the rest of the noodles with his chopsticks, trying to finish it all in one bite.

 

Seunghyub stares at Jaehyun, who stares right back, unblinking.

He’s played this game with Hwiyoung before. If he looks away it means he’s lost and Seunghyub is not a loser.

“Hey, J.Don?”

Seunghyub doesn’t dignify Jaehyun with an answer, because Jaehyun doesn’t deserve answers.

“You’re staring at me.”

Seunghyub hums to the tune of JIDA’s Autumn Breeze. If he can get it stuck in his head he won’t have to think about annoying things like Jaehyun’s voice, or Jaehyun’s face, or the fruit fly that had just landed on Jaehyun’s shoulder. It even looks like him. Or does Jaehyun look like the fruit fly? Whether it’s Zhuangzi dreaming of the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi, Seunghyub neither knows or cares.

“This feels like a familiar conversation. You know, about staring making people uncomfortable.”

Seunghyub blinks, trying to decide if he should pretend he doesn’t remember or admit he does. He decides on the latter. “I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable.”

Jaehyun resorts to his habit of selectively misinterpreting sarcasm when he feels like it. “Apology accepted,” Jaehyun pats Seunghyub gently on the head, and Seunghyub does all he can to keep himself from visibly flinching from the touch. Not because it’s unwanted, but because it’s Jaehyun, and something about that is unsettling to Seunghyub, picks at his throat and makes his lungs bleed.

Sometimes Seunghyub has to wonder if he makes Jaehyun feel as uncomfortable and Jaehyun makes him.

 

“What the fuck are you doing at three in the morning?” Jaehyun almost says through the haze of sleep deprivation and an unlit bedroom but with his last remaining self-control manages to hoarsely extract, “What’s wrong?”

There’s a suspicious Seunghyub-shaped shadow sitting on the floor clinging onto the door with both hands and Jaehyun thinks of a koala hanging off a tree. “Hip hop is dead.”

Jaehyun sinks back into his sheets. “Nobody cares, J.Don.”

“Don’t call me that,” Seunghyub wraps an arm around his knees, cheek puffed. “And I care.”

Jaehyun closes his eyes because if he doesn’t see the problem maybe it’ll go away. A few awkward seconds later he still finds himself answering, “But what’s wrong, really?”

“My project partner just sent me the bass track for our song. It’s all wrong. It’s like, compound meter. Rap beats that aren’t common time are just…weird.”

“Well,” Jaehyun’s not really sure what he can say to that, but he has an 8 AM and he really can’t be fucked to nurse Seunghyub’s wounded hip hop pride for much longer, “maybe it’s also not okay to be a conservative prick who has a narrow-minded view about what music is supposed to sound like.”

Seunghyub’s brow furrows. “The way I see it—”

“Don’t see it. Go to bed.” Jaehyun turns, fumbling for a comfortable position. “It’s not that deep. It’s just a song.” As soon as the words leave his mouth Jaehyun knows it’s the wrong thing to say. Jaehyun is good at making people laugh, but he’s pretty shit at telling people what they need to hear when they need to hear it most. He’s like an anti-therapist. If someone were to go to him with a problem, talking about it would probably make it worse.

Even in the darkness, he can see Seunghyub stiffen. Too late to take it back.

“Come here,” Jaehyun sighs, rolling over to make room for Seunghyub. Seunghyub complies, making his way across the room, plops into the bed with his too-long legs, wishbone fingers. Jaehyun can tell how Seunghyub’s pressed against the edge of the bed, ever so careful, doing all he can to not infringe upon Jaehyun’s space.

“Hyung.”

“Hm?”

Jaehyun thinks of what to say, searches for words of comfort, the appropriate remark. He thinks of the reasonable thing to say. It’s just a project, just a song. It’s not something to worry so much about. It’s not the end of the world. He thinks of the right thing to say. You’re only twenty-two, there’s so much time. Life isn’t really that short, no matter how much people say it is. It gets better. He thinks of what he wants to say. Thank you for caring so much about the little things. Thank you for sharing your music—and yourself—with the world. Thank you for doing all you can for us, and in communicating with us, and I’m sorry for not having tried as hard as you.

Instead he says, “Want to go and see the cherry blossoms? I’m done with midterms and I only have work on Monday.”

Seunghyub doesn’t answer, even though Jaehyun can tell he’s still awake.

It’s strange, lying beside another person. Jaehyun’s made acutely aware of every flick of movement, every shift in the weight of the mattress. He doesn’t know when his eyelids began to grow heavy, but it isn’t until he’s heard Seunghyub’s breathing ease into a steady rhythm, too gentle to be the harsh, desperate way Seunghyub sometimes seems to claw for air. Jaehyun listens to the quiet rise and fall of Seunghyub’s chest until the sound lulls him to sleep.

 

When Seunghyub was young a fortune teller told his mother that Seunghyub ought to learn the piano. Seunghyub’s mother found the best teacher in the neighborhood, a kind, stern woman nearing her sixties called Dr. Park.

Dr. Park would always say the same thing whenever he’d make a mistake, whenever the notes came undone beneath Seunghyub’s fingers and Seunghyub’s throat tightened, “Relax.” And when he didn’t—“It’s not the end of the world.”

Just a mistake, and Dr. Park was kind and encouraging, and so was Seunghyub’s mother, and so was everyone else.

Just a mistake, it’s not the end of the world.

But the white keys turned black, and the sharps became flat, and the room tilted on its axis, and Seunghyub’s lungs fasted dry, and a planet-sized force would pin him by the wrists.

They said, It’s not the end of the world.

Oh, but it was. Oh, but it was.

 

Seunghyub is sick of having nowhere to go, fire escape on the left but there’s nothing to escape from except printed carpet corridors that end before they begin. His ribcage is a broken escalator, railing covered with the thumbprints of people who walk in the sunlight.

Seunghyub whispers good morning to nobody, good night to Hweseung who’s fallen asleep on the couch. Looks out the window, a parking lot scene framed by olive green curtains—Jaehyun’s favorite color. 

It’s raining outside. Drops of water fall like little snowglobes, crystalline daggers grazing the surface of an injured world. More than anything, Seunghyub likes the sound of rain—it keeps him focused, the collision of a thousand, thousand transparent bodies against something greater, sharper, definite. He imagines himself as a raindrop, one that falls onto the hood of a car and runs down the window, gaining the notice of a child seated inside.

He ends up on the asphalt, muddied by the gravel thrown up from the kick of a moving tire, waiting for the sun to come out and make him disappear.

 

In May, a girl named Hwang Minhee jumps off the Hangang Bridge. Hours later they find her body in the water below. Jaehyun remembers her as a quiet girl with a studious attitude and an interest in fashion.

People ask Jaehyun if he was close to her, if he knew why. They ask what went wrong, is it the strict, conservative father, the bad breakup with Yoon Jaeseung, the C- in Molecular Biology? Seunghyub laughs and says no, and then he doesn’t say anything else.

Seunghyub talks about her like a hero. Like she’s been chosen to go on a long and perilous journey from which she may never return. It’s tentatively funny the first time but after the second Jaehyun finds it concerning. Hun agrees. Hweseung is worried enough that he plans out an intervention with Dongsung and Youngkyun, a full-blown Seunghyub Appreciation Day filled with laughter, cake, more cake (courtesy of Hweseung), and rainbows. Hun says it’s a horrible fucking idea but he spends the whole afternoon researching how to make pumpkin pasta, and Jaehyun catches him one afternoon browsing for diaphragm condenser mics hundreds of thousands of won over his probable budget.

Jaehyun, on the other hand, doesn’t do very much. He does more than the bare minimum, of course, but compared to Cha broke college student Hun who barely gets by working three jobs and Yoo I will give Seunghyub the world Hweseung, Jaehyun feels lacking. He’s good with the little things and smaller moments, like making people laugh, or cheering someone up when they’re upset over a bad exam score. Not something like this, not the way Jaehyun feels like anything he does won’t be enough. He’ll never be enough for Seunghyub, Seunghyub who’s brilliant and exceptional, Seunghyub who’s exposed to the thoughts of the sea and the wisdom of the sun.

Seunghyub who’s filled with an entire world of his own, so much more than someone ordinary like Jaehyun.

 

Seunghyub is sick of the sun, electric beginnings made of live wire presets. He’s an airwave that’s never received, a frequency that gets caught in phase cancellation with no way to flip the polarity. 

It’s the height of spring and Seunghyub knows in this lifetime he can’t find happiness, no matter what.

In his next life he‘ll be a bird, just to see what it’s like to dream of flight. He’ll live through a week of infancy before he’s pushed out of the nest, falling to death. In the lifetime after, and every lifetime following, he wants to be a jellyfish. He’ll float in the sea endlessly, waiting to be eaten by some stray turtle.

He’ll be a jellyfish filled with thoughts of a different life. Seunghyub thinks of notes that don’t belong, of sound and light liquifying, of fishbowl secrets. Seunghyub thinks of aquarium tanks filled with saltwater, of tapping at the glass, of light filtering overhead. Seunghyub thinks of drowning in a dream, drowning beneath the sun. Seunghyub thinks of Dr. Park. It’s not the end of the world, she’d say, even though it was.

But then Seunghyub realizes he thinks of Kim Jaehyun, too.

Every time he thinks of springtime, or flowers, or a bad school project, or Rooftop slowly making its way out of Melon 100, he’ll also somehow think of Jaehyun, of a knowing, wide-eyed stare, of outfits made of tricolor stitches, of the day hip hop died at three in the morning.

He’ll think of petals fluttering, a blush of pink and a promise to see the cherry blossoms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to inform me about typos, grammatical/structural mistakes or even content errors, this is painfully unbeta'd and I barely finished this under sleep deprivation


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